Texas Congressman Ron Paul feels much more optimistic about his 2012 presidential run than he did prior to his 2008 campaign, primarily because he knows that the establishment can no longer exclude him from debates and national polls.

The Congressman spoke exclusively to The Alex Jones show yesterday to give the inside track on the progress of the campaign, his thoughts on the ailing economy and to express his concerns over the precedent being set by US involvement in the military action in Libya.

Paul addressed those in the media, as well as political opponents, who have previously resorted to dirty tricks and smear in an attempt to discredit The Congressman’s campaign, noting:

“We have made progress, and that is because there are a growing number of people who are onto their tricks and are watching them rather closely, and they are going to hear from the supporters if they start doing that. So, in spite of the obstacles, our job is to keep doing what we’re doing and gain supporters.”

“The laughing and the ridicule so far has gone away,” The Congressman added. “I don’t know whether they’ll go back to that or not but it’s not like when there were just three major networks and hardly anybody on talk radio that would defend our position.”

“Last go around, the first two major debates, the one right before Iowa and one before New Hampshire, they excluded me. This year they’re not going to be able to do it.” Paul asserted.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“As bad as this system is, it still operates reasonably well. That is, over the years I’ve been able to run for Congress and get elected, and now I am still able to compete, even up against these odds and these tricks, because we can get in and organize and our numbers are growing.”

Paul specifically noted that many of his political opponents, even those that have sought to discredit him previously, are now emulating some of his views, because they recognize his growing popularity.

“I think they do have concerns. One place that we think they are revealing that we, our side, is making progress, is that they’re starting to support some of our positions. ” Paul said. “Whether it is backing off on some of this war mongering stuff and saying some things about auditing the Fed. What they believe is that if they just appease or neutralize that a little bit and they can get elected, they don’t have to follow through with the policies.”

Last week we reported on the fact that a long term Paul detractor, Newt Gingrich, has become extremely vocal about wishing to see an audit of the federal reserve, something Paul has been campaigning toward for years.

Paul also noted that he feels an overwhelming wave of support coming from younger people this time around.

“The young people are realizing how much they’re being dumped on… how they are getting ripped off because there’s no way, even if they could get a good job, they can’t pay off debt obligations. But they’re not getting good jobs.”

“We are really really facing a major problem, there has to be a dollar crisis coming.” Paul told listeners, warning that in his opinion the often repeated forecast of a slow twenty-five year decline for the dollar is being much overstated.

“The economy is sick and getting sicker… I would suggest that it’s going to come much sooner, I just don’t believe it will last for 25 years where the dollar will be the dominant reserve currency of the world.” Paul said.

“The big problem though is who’s going to pick up the pieces?” he continued “They’re getting together and trying to have another international paper currency put together, then they throw out a few tit bits, ‘well maybe we ought to put a little bit of gold into that as well’. But the problems we have are really very overwhelming, they cannot sustain this, so I would say it’s not going to be 25 years.. it could come sooner, a lot sooner, a year or two or who knows when, depends on what event might arise.”

“But the problem that they face is the one that we face in trying to figure it out. The dollar is a terrible currency, but when you compare it to the Euro that has to bail out the Greek economy, all of a sudden people look to us because traditionally we’ve ben so strong economically and militarily, they say at least we can park our money in treasury bills for another month or two or three. Some day they’re going to run out of this and the momentum will be against the dollar, and not too many years ago the dollar got in big trouble and we had to go begging to the IMF. That was in ’79 and ’80. But the time is coming, and that will be a much bigger event than we’ve just experienced.”

Switching gears to address the unconstitutional military action in Libya, the congressman noted:

“In a different age it would have been impeachable, but up until recent years, they have even gotten permission or token permission (from Congress).”

“The Congress is waking up and there is a pretty good coalition of liberals and conservatives, republicans and democrats, coming together and trying to slow this thing up and saying the president has no right to do this.” Paul said, adding “At the same time on this DoD budget authorization, they inserted in there an expansion of the power.”

” Actually, if that is passed by the Senate and put into law, we’ve literally legalized, we’ve put into the code that the president doesn’t have to come to us.”

“This to me was one of the most dangerous changes in our law, it has given legitimacy to our president and what he is doing, and of course there is not much resistance from Republicans or Democrats on this.” Paul said.

Listen to the full interview with Congressman Paul below:

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.